14 Weeks and a Santa Barbara Getaway

This past weekend, the hubby and I took a little weekend getaway down to Santa Barbara.  It was so nice to literally get away from our normal lives of yard work and house work and whateverelse work, and just have some time to ourselves!  The first day we went to breakfast at a place called Renaud's.  It's a cute little cafe and came highly recommended to us from Jenn over at July Moon.

Then we took a little drive down State street and found some parking a little closer to the beach.  We walked down to the beach, and took a stroll down the pier at Stearn's Wharf.

The entrance to the pier

The view of the marina.  

Stearn's Wharf

It was so clear!

These guys were so tame!

Baby Bean at 14 weeks.  First trip to the ocean!

After the pier, we walked back down State Street to find some lunch.  After passing so many little restaurants, we decided on one called Killer B's.  It was a grill, and after looking it up on yelp, Hubby decided it was rated high enough for his taste ;-)

After lunch where we got to sit outside and enjoy the 80 degree weather, and people watch (my favorite!!), we decided to head over to UC Santa Barbara and check out the campus.  Sorry, I didn't take any pictures there, we were trying to see how well we fit in as college students!  Finally we came back to the hotel to rest for a little while before dinner.  We went to dinner at another highly recommended location called Jane's.  This place reminded me of eating in a quaint little restaurant in Paris.  The decorations inside were so fun and cute, with twinkle lights everywhere.  And our table was upstairs right next to a window that overlooked the balcony.  It was fantastic!  And, the filet was absolutely delicious!

Sorry for the quality, it was low lighting and taken on my phone.

After dinner we did some more walking around and came across a fun little Italian restaurant where we decided to have dessert (the theme this weekend was eating apparently...)

Also while walking around and exploring all of the little alcoves were fun shops were hiding down on State Street, I saw this awesome piece of work!

Excuse my nerdiness here...but this looked like it was straight out of Harry Potter!  I was so tempted to get in and see if I would be transported to the Ministry of Magic :-)

The second day we went to breakfast at a little place called D'Angelo's Bread.  It's a great bakery and they had super delicious croissants and danishes.  From there we headed to Hendry's Beach.  It's a very cool area and they even have a whole stretch of beach just for dogs to run loose off their leashes!  It was so fun to see them all running and playing and swimming in the ocean.

After some relaxing, reading, sunbathing, and frisbee throwing on the beach, we headed back to hotel to rest up and change for our dinner cruise!

Our dinner cruise was courtesy of Santa Barbara Sailing Center.  It was a sunset cruise so we headed out on the water around 5:30.  On our way out of the harbor, we saw some rather large and rather unique boats that happened to be docked there.

Just some cool yachts and sail boats

More coolness

First up, was this beauty of a yacht.  There were some fancy shmancy people boarding this guy before we left the dock.  Apparently you can rent it out for private parties, but we learned from a couple on our cruise, that it's about $1500 an hour!!!

Then there was this piece of history.  The Spirit of Dana Point, which according to our captain, used to be called the Pilgrim.  A little tidbit of info here: This ship is an accurate replica of a 1770's privateer used during the American Revolution.  Known for their speed, it measures 118 feel long, with a rig height of 100 feet, and 5000 square feet of sail! 

More info can be found here

Then we saw this one.  The pictures definitely do not do it justice.  This massive sailboat/yacht is owned by the Firestone family.  This sucker is a whopping 171 feet long.  This was the epitome of luxury on water.

You can see better pictures and more details about this floating wonder here

 And last but not least, was this guy, the Taxi Dancer.  This boat competes in lots of long distant races all over the west coast.

And since sunset pictures don't really need an explanation...I'll just let you view :)

Tons of pelicans!

Love this silhouette.  I need to adjust the angle of the horizon though :)

Final moments of the sun

First moments of the rising full moon

On our drive back home, we were able to stop in San Luis Obispo (my old stomping grounds) and had lunch at Firestone Grill.  So yummy!

Thanks for reading my marathon post!  More craft posts to come soon, I promise!!